On this episode of the Self-Publishing with ALLi podcast, Dan Holloway reports on Grammarly’s rebrand as Superhuman and what it signals about the growing role of AI in writing tools. He also outlines the European and International Booksellers Federation’s new AI charter, which emphasizes copyright protection and fair treatment for small publishers, and highlights a new $50 million Literary Arts Fund aimed at supporting organizations that help writers and creators.
Listen to the Podcast: Grammarly Rebrands as Superhuman
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About the Host
Dan Holloway is a novelist, poet, and spoken word artist. He is the MC of the performance arts show The New Libertines, He competed at the National Poetry Slam final at the Royal Albert Hall. His latest collection, The Transparency of Sutures, is available on Kindle.
Read the Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Self-Publishing News. The really exciting news this week is what's happening next week, and what is happening next week is that for the majority of the time you will no longer just hear me as I speak with this delicious, dulcet voice of mine; you will get to see me as well.
I am going to do my very best, and with Howard permitting, with his editorial marvelousness, you will see me as I speak and gesticulate and get super excited about AI and European legislation.
I know Howard is worried about the number of ums and ah’s that I use when I speak, so I will try and um and ah a little less to make it easier for him to edit my face as well as my voice. So, that's something to look forward to.
Grammarly Rebrands to Superhuman
Talking of all things superhuman, one of the main news stories last week was the rebranding of one of writers' everywhere, and by that I think I probably mean non-professional writers every where’s, favorite apps, namely Grammarly.
Grammarly obviously is the, how do you describe it, supercharged spell check come grammar check. Like the Microsoft Office paperclip, only, I would say mildly less annoying, but I find it somewhat at least as annoying as the Microsoft Office paperclip, but many people who write stuff, whether that's emails or articles, rely on it to help them with their writing.
Grammarly is rebranding itself and is calling itself, hence forth, Superhuman. So, the product that you use, if you use the product, will still be called Grammarly, but the company that owns it will no longer be called Grammarly, it will be called Superhuman.
There will be indeed a Superhuman product called Superhuman Go, which isn't a very impressive engine for the board game. It is instead an AI assistant for Grammarly because, of course, the world needs more AI assistance and one of its features, very interestingly, is going to be apparently a plagiarism checker. So, there we go. Grammarly is going to have an AI plagiarism checker.
As I mentioned in the column, it feels like someone forgot to activate the irony checker, shall we say.
AI Charter by European and International Booksellers Federation
While we're on the subject of AI, there is a new charter about AI, and this charter is for the European and International Booksellers Federation. They have issued a charter on AI and AI use that has 11 points. As we have more time here than I have in my column, I'm going to share those points with you.
We have 11 points, and very importantly, these really focus on copyright. So, copyright is absolutely at the heart of this as a charter for, as they put it, what they believe matters to the future of AI and how AI is used.
So, there's a lot more detail than this in the paper itself, but I'll read the headlines.
Number one of the 11 guiding principles, copyright is the bedrock of our industry. Number two, copyright enables innovation. So, there we go, front and centre is the importance of copyright.
Number three, governance and accountability are needed to level the playing field. And number four, a human-centric and ethical gen-AI is the way forward for our industry.
So, governance and making sure that there is, as a firm set of guardrails in place is seen as being essential, as indeed is customer transparency. So, in principle number five, consumers have the right to know, and on a similar principle, environmental sustainability is key. So, it matters that this is done right, it matters that it is done ethically.
Interestingly, there is a further ethical dimension, but they're very much an indie and small player dimension here. When they say in principle, number seven, competitiveness means that small and medium sized enterprises and micro companies are not left behind. Very much emphasizing the importance of small businesses like we are.
Number eight, bookshops require compliant solutions. So, that's a bit technical. Number nine, generative AI should be based on consent. Number 10, AI has the potential to support and help book sellers. And number 11, we need research and assessments of the risks and impact of generative AI.
So, there's a set of principles. There are a couple of areas in which clearly AI is considered to be something that can be highly beneficial, but there is in general a call, I won't say so much for caution, as for a firm steering hand to make sure that the ship gets steered in the right direction and people don't get left behind. In particular, small players, indies, small businesses, don't get left behind.
So, it feels like that's a fairly much in line with a lot of what we've seen other charters putting out, and that means that we are starting to see a landscape emerging in which people on the creative side of things are calling for their industry to protect them, is the way to put it, and not just to think about the big companies in the field.
One of the things this contrasts with is some of the more positive statements around AI that we have seen, for example, from the Association of American Publishers, which you might say represents much bigger industries.
New $50 Million Literary Arts Fund
In talking of big and small, there was a very interesting announcement last week of a new $50 million literary arts fund. This is a huge amount of money. It comes as we are in full-on prize season. So, we're used to talking about books and writers and the whole book industry winning lots and lots of money, whether that's £50,000 for the Booker prize or £ 875,000 for the Nobel. We're used to talking about people winning lots of money.
This literary arts fund is designed to give a lot of money to a lot of smaller organizations, so that's where it's really of interest to us. They are looking specifically to support non-profits in the US who directly support writers and creators.
The aim is that at least $50 million will be given away in grants by 2031 to those organizations who will in turn give onward to writers and creators. So, it's very much something that could benefit a lot of us and that we need to keep our ear to the ground for when it comes to availability of funding that has come through this.
November the 10th is the key date to look out for. Obviously, that's just a few days away. So, on Monday, November the 10th, the first call for grant applications is going to open.
There isn't very much at the moment about eligibility, so I would recommend you keep your eyes peeled to look out for the announcement of that first call, so that if there is anything in which writers or writer’s groups might be eligible directly to apply, you do not miss out on the opportunity to do so.
But also keep an eye out on the kind of terms that are being talked about because that will inform the kind of organizations who do receive these grants, and that in turn will inform the possibility for you as indie authors to benefit from them.
That feels like some positive news to end with. So, I will leave you with that.
I very much look forward, I will say for the last time to talking to you again next week, because next week I will be talking to you and you will be seeing me. See me then, as it were, and have a very happy weekend and week in the meanwhile.
